martes, 17 de mayo de 2011

Survey results

Our group is comprised by Juan, Marc and Ariadna.
We have chosen "Social networks" for the name of our blog because we are a generation that has grown with technologies and Internet too, so social networks are for us the way to communicate one to each other. They are part of our daily routine and are also important in our society.
Social networks have affected the way in which people behave. It allows us to meet people we haven’t contact for a long time ago, upload our photos, comment our friends, and be in contact with everybody.
For this reason we thought that this topic should be very interesting for us to talk about because is an issue that is very familiar to us and very easy to explain something.
We have made a survey asking people about their using of this kind of networks: how often do they use it, why, when was the first time they started using them …
We conducted the survey to 26 people by an important social network nowadays which is Facebook.
We did it on this way because communicating by a social network is easier and faster than asking one person to another. This option is slowly and requires time to do it. The conclusions of the results of our survey are the following:
After we have realized a survey about the social networks to 26 people we have observed and analyze which are there opinions about social networks and how are they used to use them.
On the first place we can say is that most of the young people have in common nowadays is that most of them use social networks. At the same time we have to add that most of the people we have interviewed only have a profile account on social networks, and only a minority has more than one social network. Also it’s remarkable the fact that almost everyone connect to their accounts more than once a day and the others at least once a day. That shows to us that everyone who has an account on social networks connects on their profile.
The majority of people who use social networks, they use it to disconnect from the reality or as an activity of entertainment. And the other half of people use them for work, and a minor of people use it for other things that we unknown.
When we asked people if social networks are safe, more than 60% said that more or less. The rest of it a 21% said that yes they are and only the 12% rest said that social networks are not safe. So in general we can see that people trust in the privacy of social networks and they think that they don’t have to worry about it. 
The people, who answered our survey, said that Facebook was the coolest social network. To contrast that the popularity of social networks isn’t only between young people we asked about if any of their family members use them. 50% said that some of them use it, 32% said yes and only 18% said no. The answers of this question are kind of interesting because only a significant 18% of the people asked have nobody of his family members on any social networks.
Almost, everyone asked, said they would not pay for use their social network, except of two freaks. With reference to the average of the age of people start using social networks, 50% affirm that they began to use it between 16 and 20 years old, a 38% said that they began with an age between 12 and 15 years old and only a 12% said that they began to use social networks with more than 20 years old.
To conclude with the analysis of our survey, we can say that most of people who we have passed our survey think that social networks are useful. What impressed us is that some of them answered social networks are not useful but they also have one. Why someone creates an account on any social network if he/she thinks is not useful?????????????

The questions and the answers of our survey

http://es.surveymonkey.com/MySurvey_Responses.aspx?sm=rwD5NyAUQFoPG78Q8k46MwvpmMtZ6zjUiqucV1OcIUM%3d

miércoles, 30 de marzo de 2011

Other social networks

Apart of Facebook, that is the page on the net that I have most commented on, exists other social networks with similarities to Facebook and with a lot of members too.

My Space, for example, is a type of social network that as the other pages you first need to register by e-mail address, then you are already registered and after that, you have to create your own profile with your musical tastes, hobbies, favourite books, ... to let people know your preferences so that you can meet them because of your same tastes.
You can also add photos or videos that you find interesting and your friends can commented them or give their opinion deppending of the theme and the dislikes.
Actually, social networks have a similar estructure and clear objectives between them because their order is to meet people, share fles, photos and videos besides knowing what are your friends doing at the moment.
There's an option that you don't allowed people to see your profile or even your friends.

Twitter is free to join and has the same structure as the other ones.
What is particularly of it is that your messages are limited just to 140 characters, that's why people call it a "microblogging" tool. So that your messages have to be concise and brief.

If you want to use any of this social networks you must use a name, that don't have to be real, which reflects you.
There are many different ways about using Twitter or other pages, here are five of them:

-For building your experience and your authorty.
- For giving more sense to your ideas.
- For promoting yourself.
-For being more social with your readers and people you want to meet.
-For making all you update the objective to create a big cultural community.

Posted by: Ariadna Lliveria (5th article)

'The social network'

Some people is concerned about the 'boom' that social networks have produced but there's a particular case that has recently shown us the importance of that.

     The Social Network


I'm talking about the film The Social Network , it is a 2010 drama film about the founding of the social networking website Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. It i directed by Mark Zuckerberg.
He i the youngest millionaire on the planet with 26 years old. He is a genious that has changed Internet and also our lives.
This film has already reached 500 million users. This important figure means a radical transformation in the way of sharing our stuff, form pictures to news. The media and how has affect to the sociologist mixtue the envy with the fear.
Even more amazing is the fact that each Facebook members spend  an average of 55 minutes per day being at the net.
The way which we share what we think and feel makes us more dependent. But on the other hand we have to be conscious that Facebook has changed our lives and the next future is still more promising. One of the most interesting irony is that the most player in social networking  is  who proved to be someone so socially retarded who borders on sociopathic at times.
And this is what the film want to show: how has a social network changed lives of people one day to another and the relations and problems that it has caused.
We have to use it with caution.


Posted by: Ariadna Lliveria (4th article)

Social Media Revolution

   [  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8  ]

This is a video that I have found on Youtube page which explains all the social networking efffect that is very popular in our country because of the revolution that has made.
It explains different issues that are important in all the economical and social influence because this revolution has also affect the way of life and the political and culture of the cities.

This type of documentaries make us realise if we are for or against the evolution of media because of the change it is promoting.

First of all, we can think that the revolution of media is an economical strategy of companies to earn money making people see things with other kind of view. Social networking started with little companies and different groups that only pretend to share information or ideologies, but now almost all companies have their own blog page, or an account in any social network as Facebook, Twitter,...
There are other cases in which social networks and social media hasn't a positive result. That's the case of young people, the new society of the future. They are growing in a technological/virtual world because now things don't seem the same as few years ago. In conclusion, people don't meet the others face to face, people don't keep their life in privacy unless they share information with everybody. There's no personal life and relationships because everybody knows others routine. Furthermore, it is impossible to have more than 100 friends and we have to be aware of it because a lot of pedophiles and bad people are hidden behind and Internet page.

Another fact is that traditional mediums are losing audience because people have less free time and when they are working or having a break, one of the common activities to do is to be connected to the network.

We have to pretend not to be completely obsesive with social networks because if we lose consciousness we will finally lose ourselves.

Posted by: Ariadna Lliveria (3rd article)

Marc Serrano - 5th comment

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/mar/21/social-networks-activists-achieve-change


Taking advantage of the actuality news about the revolutions of the society from North Africa to Middle East I look for this in an article that I have found, again, in “The Guardian”, which talks about the lasts social revolutions that have occurred in Egypt and Tunisia, and how the social networks have influenced, and in what way, in these revolutions.

The article says that the old models of organization no longer work and especially in the new contexts. Who thinks that the social networks only serve for social objectives and entertainment, is in the wrong way, because actually these revolutions that we mentioned were proposed by the social networks, so it can makes us an idea to the social impact that this media has in our society. This way to protest against a government or a law, which consists in people getting together at a point in one city is what “The New York Times” calls “the rise of the second superpower”.

Experiences like this revolutions have led us to explore new types of institutions, the called network movements. One of this network movements is which the text exposes, “Avaaz.org” that is nowadays the best example of this kind of movements. Through “Avaaz”, millions of citizens all over the world have met to change government policies and for the social reconstruction of some countries.

This kind of networks work with the solidarity combining old and new tactics to make changes through movements for civil rights and independence.

We are in front of the biggest revolution in our history, the media revolution. The social networks can get together millions of people all over the world to change anything even overturn governments.


Are they controlling us?

The social network in which I'm going to focus particularly is Facebook. Here there's a graphic I have found on the Internet, that shows which is the group of population that most use Facebook a day. 




As we can see, the population between 25 and 34 years are who most use this social network, followed by adults between 34 and 44. However, people who less use Facebook to communicate with them friends and relatives are the major ones of 65 years followed by the group of people between 55 and 64 years old.

There is a big difference between these groups of population and it can be caused by the technological advances because in the past people in the past people didn’t use the computer and there weren’t any websites, social networks or special computer programs.
Therefore, people didn’t know how to use a computer.
Unlike nowadays in our society, population is teach since they are little children.
Young people is increasingly growing up faster, and since they starts at school teachers make them know and be aware of how important is technology for us, and how does it works.

Society is evolving at the same time new technologies are growing with us.
Right now we connect our lives with Internet, and of course with social networks, as it has produced a new revolution and a big repercussion for the society.
We can say that it has created a new way of life.

People don’t need to talk face to face because they can chat as long as they want by any of these sites so that it is available 24h a day. This is a problem for our society due to people is losing them values and communication is not the same as some years ago.

Posted by: Ariadna Lliveria (2nd article)